QUOTE OF THE DAY
TechCrunch: The Midwest Is On Track For Its Strongest Year In Startup Investing As “The Rest” Rises
From Chicago’s city of big shoulders to the new businesses bolstering Detroit’s renaissance; in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Kansas City and St. Louis, startup economies are flourishing across the Midwest.
The proof is in events like Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest tour, a whistle-stop paean to entrepreneurship whose first leg wrapped up over the summer. Case just finished his second turn through the Midwest this month, writing $100,000 checks to winners of pitch competitions in cities like Madison, Wis., Minneapolis, Des Moines, St. Louis and Kansas City.
Beyond AOL’s (the owner of this fine publication) former chief executive making it rain, the midwest is having a banner year. In fact, the region is on track to see more companies funded this year, than at any point in the past five years, according to CrunchBase data.
Chicago Now: Will Lewis’ Impact Continue?
It’s a grab-bag of news today, including In These Times’ reflections on the impact of Karen Lewis, a belated Tribune story on the departure of Winkler (or maybe just an errant RSS feed), and a Sun Times’ piece on clout contractors getting CPS contracts despite a ban. That documentary about school closings is premiering. Nationally, the teachers unions are making a big $60 million play on the November midterm elections, and opinions vary on why Deasy left LAUSD. What else? Let us know in comments below or on Twitter at @district299 or Facebook.
Karen Lewis Has Already Redefined Chicago Politics In These Times: ‘It’s not about me, it’s about a movement,” has been Karen Lewis’ mantra. After her departure from the Chicago mayoral race, her allies are taking those words to heart.
Chicago Public Schools’ personnel chief steps down Chicago Tribune: Her departure was first announced by CPS chief executive Barbara Byrd-Bennett in an email on Wednesday morning. Byrd-Bennett said Winckler “has decided to blend her private and public background to consult with organizations within and outside of …
US News: 7 Things to Review During Medicare Open Enrollment
Medicare beneficiaries will get an opportunity to make changes to their Medicare Part D coverage between Oct. 15 and Dec. 7, 2014. Many retirees will experience premium increases, changes in covered drugs and new cost-sharing requirements if they don’t switch plans. Here’s what you should review during the annual open enrollment period so you can select a new prescription drug plan if necessary.
Covered medications. Prescription drug plans are permitted to tweak the roster of medications they cover each year, and it’s important to double-check that your current medications and any new prescription drugs you expect to use in the coming year will be covered. “The first thing people should look at is whether all of their prescriptions are on the formulary,” says Casey Schwarz, policy and client services counsel at the Medicare Rights Center, an advocacy organization. “A plan can have very low premiums, but if the drug you would like to take is not on the formulary and not covered, then it is not such a good deal.”
Premium prices. The average Medicare Part D monthly premium will increase by 4 percent to $38.83 in 2014, assuming beneficiaries remain in their current plan, according to an analysis of 2015 Part D plans by researchers at Georgetown University, the University of Chicago and the Kaiser Family Foundation. However, beneficiaries in six of the most popular Part D plans will see their premiums increase by at least 10 percent, and one Part D plan increased premiums by 52 percent. About 1.5 million beneficiaries (8 percent) will experience a premium increase of $10 per month or more, while 985,000 beneficiaries (5 percent) will experience a premium decline of at least $10. “You have to weigh the amount of the change in premiums versus the inconvenience of making a shift,” says Jack Hoadley, a health policy analyst at Georgetown University and co-author of the report. “We know that some people are looking at premium increases that can be as much as $20 a month or more. In those kinds of situations, the payoff for making a switch can be substantial. If the change in your premiums is only a dollar or two, it may not be worth making a change.”
US News: As U.S. Economy Worsened, Vasectomy Rates Rose, Study Finds
During the recent “Great Recession,” worries about the cost of raising children in an uncertain job market may have spurred an uptick in vasectomies, a new study suggests.
“Despite an unchanged desire for more children, men in relationships reported planning for smaller families,” said a team led by Dr. Bobby Najari, a urologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
Najari and colleagues reported the findings Monday in Honolulu at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).
Chicago Sun Times: 3 Daley scandals cost taxpayers $6 million in legal fees
Chicago taxpayers have paid more than $6 million to private lawyers hired to fight three City Hall scandals that benefited family and friends of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
And the legal bills keep mounting, as the court battles, being waged in state and federal courthouses from Chicago to Delaware, go on.
There’s the case of the Park Grill, owned by friends, associates and shirt-tale relatives of the former mayor. They got a 30-year deal to operate a white-tablecloth restaurant in Millennium Park under the Bean, the gleaming new symbol of Chicago.
WUIS: Privacy Issues Complicate Body Cams For Illinois Police
Advocates of body cameras say they can clear up the muddle of facts that often accompany police shootings, like the one in Ferguson. They also say police will be on better behavior if they know they’re being watched.
Law enforcement elsewhere has jumped in, but Illinois’ law on recording was struck down in court earlier this year. Democratic state Rep. Elaine Nekritz, of Northbrook, says that leaves a lot of open questions about privacy — both for police and the citizens who would be recorded.
“Where is that data stored?” she asks. “How much of it is kept (and) for how long? And then who has access to it? Does the media have access to every interaction?”
Some of our readers have asked why we’ve devoted so much space to the Wisconsin prosecutorial probe of conservatives for supposed campaign-finance violations. One reason is to oppose a particular injustice, but Wisconsin is also on the front lines of the latest national offensive to regulate free political speech and assembly.
That came into stark view last week with a new and welcome judicial ruling in Wisconsin, only days after the Brennan Center issued a trumpet call for government to find more ways to criminalize campaign spending. The new liberal target is “coordination” between politicians and independent groups. This is dangerous stuff.
First, the good news from Wisconsin, where federal Judge Rudolph Randa issued an order last week preventing prosecutors and the state’s Government Accountability Board from prosecuting groups for coordinating on issue advocacy. The judge issued the order because he noted that the plaintiff against the state was “likely to succeed on the merits.”
CARTOON OF THE DAY
